It seems greatly in evidence in this list that most interested parties are most enthusiastic at intellectualizing about a practice that they have never been exposed to and regarding a cultural subgroup they are not in. While I am personally against all mutilation practices carried out without health benefit, I LISTEN to those who support such practices for clues as to how change can be brought about. What I present here is neither theory or attitude. It is fact which comes from personal experience, my own and that of other people. That is basic undeniable reality.

Women who have been clitoridectomized and men who have been circumcised -- when they believe their parents love them -- have usually said to me that they EACH would insist on their sons and daughters going through the same alteration. Their intense fear and concern, almost a paranoia, particularly in a country-culture such as Egypt, is that without such alteration their son or daughter will be ostracised from the community. Do any of you ever consider what this means in a highly authoritarian close relationship, order-by-dependency society?

Even within this newsgroup we have seen international news reports of girls being murdered within their communities for not having a mutilating operation. Women from such societies have told me that if they escaped that possibility, no socially respectable person in their culture would consider them as valuable as a dog. The instances of exclusion and penalty within such cultures are small in number partly because of the horrible physical and emotional torture which is experienced PUBLICLY -- and which is used as an example to repeatedly strike fear into anyone wavering from "what we have always done."

Ostracism directed at men is much more subtle, particularly in North America where many of the adult population in this century has been successfully brainwashed into believing that certified physicians are gods never to be questioned. Myths, yes, have encouraged both parent and doctor to regard circumcision as a health benefit. So-called scientists have intellectualized the pros and cons endlessly. This has encouraging political leaders to further rationalize that they should do nothing because the scientists, other gods in our culture, can't decide what is right.

Adults, pacified by authoritarian religious institutions, authoritarian educational systems, a non- assertive communicating style, and a mass culture authoritarian legal and political system -- mostly look to their medical, religious and scientific specialists (socially acknowledged gods) to tell them what to do and when. Unfortunately, the gods look to each other for justification and back to the parents. The result is that the status quo continues.

For those who want REAL change, a look deep below the surface is required.
Until you demonstrate (not often here nor anywhere) the ability to communicate self-assertively and promote such independence, freedom and respect for one another between each other and within your own families -- how can you encourage the others whose help you need to make substantial change -- to build their own self-esteem and RISK ostracism.

The power of communication style and political power has been historically demonstrated for over 3000 years; believing that we can FORCE other people to change these ways through law or shame is simply exchanging one I-know-what's-best-for-you authority for another. Believing that we can intellectualize the world into SYMPATHIZING with us is an idealistic pattern which has frequently failed. Change begins at home and in the schools and is mirrored in our communication.

Open any door and you will find someone who wants to be accepted by their peers and afforded the rights and privileges of their peers. A common misunderstanding and assumption is that "myths" are simply stories of fantasy -- lies. The truth that we are finding is that many so-called myths carry an element of truth around which an ever thickening coating of dramatic description congeals -- like most of what is televised in North America today.

Relevancy is the key.
Until we can acknowledge the reality of the truth behind a practice, we forever victimize those who continue to practice it as being monsters. Call me a monster and I lose my self-esteem. Without that self-esteem, I have no motivation to change -- unless I do so grudgingly because I fear you. There is little which can be said as a health benefit for clitoridectomy in ANY climate, but much that can be said for a health benefit for circumcision in a HOT, DESERT climate -- the genesis of the practice. Acknowledge the once useful practice for what it was and you empower the individual to discard it as no longer RELEVANT.

It is perhaps not too surprising that most of the contributors to this list have NO EMPATHY for someone who lives in a hot desert climate for most people with such a background have no formal schooling beyond the basics, no computers, little money, and are more concerned about feeding their family than changing the world.

Put yourself in the following environment.
You, your family and your ancestors are nomadic herders. You are fortunate if you have the opportunity to bathe once a week. Maybe you wash your clothes then, or maybe they have to wait 2 weeks. You move camp frequently perhaps every day at times. Everything you have, you must carry, or must be carried by a few draft animals. You probably wear loose fitting woolen clothing. By day you sweat; by night you are chilled. You have no toilet paper. You have no refrigerator. You have "wisely" chosen not to circumcise your infant twin boys.

One develops diarrhea --- perhaps some food poisoning, too much heat, food interaction. You do your best to keep him clean, difficult with little water to spare and many miles from an oasis. Somehow, (you figure it out) a few drops of the watery excrement soil his underclothing -- almost unnoticeable. A day, two days at most, a rash begins to develop over the head of his penis and under the foreskin. It is very sore. There is no doctor within hundreds of miles. Medicines are few and you probably don't know what bacteria are and only have what appear to be superstitions to others for dealing with this new development. A few more days in the heat and your son's penis becomes ulcerated. What to do! Now, if you cut off his penis, it may save his life. If you hesitate, he may die in several more days.

Couldn't happen, you say.
Take ANY male, uncircumcised, splash this same concoction of bacteria in his underwear where his penis rests, deprive him of a change of clothes for three or four days, expose him to daily hot temperatures producing sweat -- and watch the rash appear. Washing with soap and clean water now and eating a proper diet can eliminate the infection within 24 to 48 hours. Our desert nomad does not have these options. Had he circumcised his son, the damp moist environment between glans and foreskin would have been absent, AND bacterial growth would have been discouraged.

What of the second son?
When he grows old enough to begin a constant production of smegma (see an earlier posting on what it is), the excretion collects in the reservoir at the base of the penis glans at the deepest inward part covered by the foreskin. In better circumstances, this area would be washed daily with the rest of the body. But we are in the desert, remember. Occasionally, we must go 2 or even 3 weeks without bathing. The human body was not made for this environment -- but this IS our world!

After 2 weeks, your son, the father of your future grandchildren, begins to develop a dry itchy, smelly rash. He is ashamed and embarrassed. He has never heard of anyone else getting such a thing. He becomes paranoid about what he could have done wrong to deserve this. Two more days and the pain is so irritating that he is walking strangely and is confronted by you who are concerned. He reveals his secret shame.

Now you are VERY concerned.
First, you don't understand why THIS son has THIS disease. Again, water is scarce, a "balanced" diet is seldom possible, and a doctor is far off. IF you realize what is necessary, and I don't know why you would, you retract the foreskin of your son, use precious water to thoroughly clean the area, and somehow try to pin the foreskin back to keep the infected area dry. I can't imagine your son walking around and herding the sheep and goats while holding the foreskin on his penis retracted -- all day! You know the alternative.

Say you are not this intuitive.
Your sons' infection quickly gets worse and your answer to any infected limb is -- amputation. There go the grandchildren and your semi- retirement. And if you can't bring yourself to do this -- you lose ALL of your sons.

Clitoridectomy has a less obvious and less "provable" origin.
With recent discoveries (you can get the details from one of the archaeology series on the Discovery channel) we know that the practice began about the same time as a woman (Hatshepsut, 1540 B.C. to 1481 B.C.) was pharaoh in Egypt. Unknown, it would appear, to most of her subjects, she dressed and personified a man, not unlike a number of other women through history. This was a time when the population of the Nile valley was outstripping its agricultural productivity, an advantage which earlier had provided a material luxury and enhanced population growth.

Those individuals who crave political power in an autocracy have frequently proven to be intellectual idealists --- tyrants, who took upon themselves the responsibility of making the "right" choices for the masses. There are many examples of such political leaders in THIS century, from almost any major state -- and their populations have ALWAYS been happy to follow their lead into hugely destructive outcomes.

This is not a novel idea that population overload is an explanation for the economic and political ills of most mass societies. Witness the Zero Population movement in North America less than 30 years ago when, for a time, young parents were frowned upon by their "more responsible" childless peers. Obviously, and clearly, lessening the female enjoyment of sex could be rationalized as a method of birth control, even as using a tar-wax vaginal plug was at the time. We are talking about the survival of a worldwide (so they presumed) state which had faced or was facing the potential of civil war and self-destruction. Is there ANY political leader who wants to lose their career, and possibly their life, with the dissolution of their state?

But let's look even deeper.
Not often, but many psychologists are probably aware of an instance - an individual will become antagonistic to his or her own gender. That is, they will positively hate their gender and wish they were of the opposite gender. This psychology appears to develop, as I have witnessed it, with persons who by circumstance, ostracism, elitism or other factor -- are both separated from their peers AND are in a very gender role-based society, AND, develop an introspective intensely rational personality. The numbers of such "intense" persons required to change a society do not have to be large if that society is one in which one person may decide what is law.

In the neighbourhood that I grew up in, in North America, I knew a boy who fit this pattern of development. During his pre-teen and teen years, he hated being a boy. No, he was not and never became a homosexual. He envied girls who appeared to him to have a life of luxury -- never having to do the hard labor jobs and the dirty tasks that were expected of him as a boy. For him, staying home to cook meals and look after children was a holiday compared to herding cattle, cleaning manure out of stables, and being thoroughly enveloped in grain chaff and hay dust every day.

At the time, our community was somewhat secretive, pious and negative about sexuality. Sex was what evil people did. It's a matter of cognitive dissonance that all the parents seemed to believe they were "good" people, yet seem to have committed this evil somewhere along the way. This boy developed an early, for those days, sex drive and found himself lustfully attracted to the opposite gender. His intellectualized moral anti-sex attitudes turned against him and he hated his sexual desires and sexual organs with a passion. He interpreted this passion as the ultimate weakness of men.

He would have gladly had himself castrated, and, if he had been given the power -- he would have gladly "freed" many men in the community from this "evil". He did not have such power. Neither would his community have tolerated such a self-victimization. I know that this no-win terror of attitude-belief-practice-emotion resulted in at least two suicide attempts. After that, he moved away and I heard how he became a closet political terrorist and eventually succeeded in dying -- removing him from his perceived weakness and self-hatred.

What if the boy I knew had been a princess in a large state dictatorship with rulers gaining power by heredity? What if her inner disgust and self-hatred had been directed outwards? The Romans discovered that a dictator can either be passively ineffectual, aggressively constructive, or, aggressively destructive. Given privilege, authority, a "sacred trust", an idealistic and highly rational concern for and assumed responsibility for one's whole civilization, --- faced with potential anarchy-hunger-poverty, seeing population growth as the greatest current evil, AND, acknowledging one's own ability to and pleasure at becoming sexually excited -- it is not a far distance for such a FEMALE pharaoh to "legalize" and legitimize clitoridectomy -- by using herself as an example, willingly!

The error is not in the "corruption" of her thinking so much as it is in the political organizing principle of EVERY mass society which dictates that the many will submit their freedom and independence and self- esteem to a select few who either seize power or are given power.

IF you sincerely want to eradicate gender victimization, you must eliminate the authoritarian structures which support it. Instead of attacking and making enemies, empathize and make friends. Let those know who fear change that there is a place for them in a loving society IF and WHEN they choose to change. Present a society of victimization as an alternative to a member of a society of victimization and you present a negligible emotional and social choice.

Like the statement in "Apocalypse Now", the movie, you are cutting them to pieces with a machine gun and then handing them a bandaid and expecting that they will forgive you. Rip away their culture and family and what are you going to offer them -- besides words! Are you advocating safe houses, counseling services, laws to protect them in the same way as battered spouses SOMETIMES receive support now? Are you advocating a culture-wide training in self-assertive communication and empathy skills to empower the individual?

Are you willing to say that you love the person who performs the clitoridectomy enough that you will try to empower them to acknowledge their own hurt and victimization and empathize with their own inner child - to the point where they will literally risk their OWN life to change their family history? Co-dependency is a strong basis for victimization and self-enslavement whether the attachment is to another person, to a drug, to a tradition. Can we change society to empower the individual? Can you change yourself?

NOTE ONE:
We know that ancient Egyptian recorded history shows an alternating economic pattern of expansion and recession. Almost every other "advanced" ancient society has grown in density --- usually in an urban area, with the benefit of irrigation for local intense agricultural production. It has been a frequent human archaeological pattern for such cultures to reach a materially rich extravagant economic level before suddenly disintegrating.

Intensive irrigation frequently leaches all of the nutrients from the soil, and/or increases the salt content in the soil. Salt is an herbicide = decreasing crop production. The Nile Valley is fortunate to have an annual deposition of new nutrients with each flood. Still, economic prosperity always attracts desperate, greedy or entrepreneurial persons to such centers and the population continually dramatically increases. Eventually, mass extinction by disease, invasion, or crop failures occurs. How can this be prevented?

NOTE TWO:
A review of Egyptian history shows that longer periods of unification and political power building are alternated with shorter periods of anarchy, unrest, conquest.

INTERNET RESOURCES

1. Adult penile anatomy and function.
   http://www.cirp.org/CIRP/library/anatomy

2. Male Sexuality - The Intact Penis.
   http://net.indra.com/~shredder/intact/anatomy/index.html

3. Testicular Self Examination, How to Do a
   http://tcrc.acor.org/tcexam.html

4. Vulvar Self Exam: Self knowledge for self-preservation.
   http://www.ivf.com//vse.html
   
   
   

5. TRADITIONAL Sexual Mutilation:

   • Circumcision Information and Resource Page.
     http://www.cirp.org/CIRP/

   • Female Genital Mutilation: An Introduction.
     http://www.hollyfeld.org/fgm/intro/fgmintro.html

PAPER RESOURCES

Equipment for Eternity:
Egyptian Arts and Crafts of the New Kingdom 1570 to 1085 B.C.,

Rosa A. Frey, M.A. Research and Writing;

Art Gallery of Ontario, and, Royal Ontario Museum;

317 Dundas St. W., Toronto M5T 1G4 --- 100 Queen's Park, Toronto M5S 2C6

1979, 32 pages

How Smegma Serves The Penis, an article;

1984, Joyce Wright, M.D.;

source not confirmed --- could be

Family Doctor magazine, British Medical Association;

Thanks to Stephen King for bringing this article to the attention of many.

Newborns: Care of the Uncircumcised Penis,

1984, American Academy of Pediatrics;

Childbirth Education Foundation, P.O. Box 251, Oxford, PA 19363;

Thanks to Stephen King for bringing this article to the attention of many.

Serpents in the Sky: The High Wisdom of Ancient Egypt,

1993, John Anthony West;

Quest Books, Wheaton, Ill., USA

What Life Was Like on the Banks of the Nile: Egypt 3050-30 BC,

Editors of Time-Life Books,

Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia, USA;

1996, 192 pages

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